Essays in Risk Management for Crude Oil Markets
by
Abdullah Al Mansour
A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Economics
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2012
c Abdullah Al Mansour 2012 I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners.
I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public.
ii Abstract
This thesis consists of three essays on risk management in crude oil markets. In the first essay, the valuation of an oil sands project is studied using real options approach. Oil sands production consumes substantial amount of natural gas during extracting and upgrading. Natural gas prices are known to be stochastic and highly volatile which introduces a risk factor that needs to be taken into account. The essay studies the impact of this risk factor on the value of an oil sands project and its optimal operation. The essay takes into account the co-movement between crude oil and natural gas markets and, accordingly, proposes two models: one incorporates a long-run link between the two markets while the other has no such link. The valuation problem is solved using the Least Square Monte Carlo (LSMC) method proposed by Longstaff and Schwartz (2001) for valuing American options. The valuation results show that incorporating a long-run relationship between the two markets is a very crucial decision in the value of the project and in its optimal operation. The essay shows that ignoring this long-run relationship makes the optimal policy sensitive to the dynamics of natural gas prices. On the other hand, incorporating this long-run relationship makes the dynamics of natural gas price process have a very low impact on valuation and the optimal operating policy.
In the second essay, the relationship between the slope of the futures term structure, or the forward curve, and volatility in the crude oil market is investigated using a measure of the slope based on principal component analysis (PCA). The essay begins by reviewing the main theories of the relation between spot and futures prices and considering the implication of each theory on the relation between the slope of the forward curve and volatility. The diagonal VECH model of Bollerslev et al. (1988) was used to analyze the relationship between of the forward curve slope and the variances of the spot and futures prices and the covariance between them. The results show that there is a significant
iii quadratic relationship and that exploiting this relation improves the hedging performance using futures contracts.
The third essay attempts to model the spot price process of crude oil using the notion of convenience yield in a regime switching framework. Unlike the existing studies, which assume the convenience yield to have either a constant value or to have a stochastic behavior with mean reversion to one equilibrium level, the model of this essay extends the Brennan and Schwartz (1985) model to allows for regime switching in the convenience yield along with the other parameters. In the essay, a closed form solution for the futures price is derived. The parameters are estimated using an extension to the Kalman filter proposed by Kim (1994). The regime switching one-factor model of this study does a reasonable job and the transitional probabilities play an important role in shaping the futures term structure implied by the model.
iv Acknowledgments
I offer my sincere gratitude to my supervisors, Dr. Margaret Insley and Dr. Tony Wirjanto, for their continuous support during my doctoral study. Without their time and energy they offered me, this project would have been very hard to complete. Their knowledge, experience, commitment, guidance and patience have contributed a big part of this thesis. I am also indebted to the other committee members, Dr. Dinghai Xu, Dr. Alain-Desire Nimubona and Dr. Kenneth Vetzal for their discussions and comments on my thesis
Of course my deepest gratitude go to my father, Mohammad Almansour. I owe to my father something I can neither express nor repay. Thank you my father for your everlasting support and continuous encouragement. I also would like to thank my mother, Dolayyel Almansour, for the unconditional love and constant prayers which were like the light I see through. Her voice over the phone was a great source of motivation, especially when I hear her say: see you soon Abdullah.
Foremost amongst the individuals to whom I am thankful is my wife, Dalal Alhammad. I owe her a grate favor that I am sure I will be still owing throughout my life. Indeed, It is a great blessing to work in such a project with such an accompany filled with inspiring love, support, patience and since of humor. I keep asking the God that whatever comes out of this success to be a source of blessing and happiness to you.
I would like to thank my lovely sisters, Eman, Huda, and Lateefa for there love, concern and encouragement. Special thanks to Lateefa for taking care of my Mom. I am also thankful to my father-, mother-in-low, Hmoud Alhammad and Lolwah Alsabt, for their concern and honest prayers. Special thanks to my grandmother in-low, Umm Ali Alsabt, for her endless and honest prayers.
v Many thanks to all my friends at Waterloo who made my graduate study very special and my stay in Canada feel like home. In particular, Dr. Ahmad Alojairi, Dr. Walid Bahamdan and Dr. Abdullah Basiouni. It is not the coffee we were drinking together almost every day that would keep me awake late at night, it is the honest friendship, the critical thinking and the great experience we shared that would keep me awake in my life. By the way, it’s my turn!
I would like to thank the department of Economics for providing the support and facilities I have needed to produce and complete my thesis.
vi Dedication
To my parents... See you soon.
To my wife... Here you go.
To my little twins... Here I am.
vii Table of Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Tables x
1 Introductory Chapter 1
2 The Impact of Stochastic Extraction Cost on the Value of an Exhaustible Resource: the Case of the Alberta Oil Sands 8
2.1 Introduction ...... 8
2.2 Oil Sands Background ...... 11
2.3 Co-movement of Crude Oil and Natural Gas Prices ...... 14
2.4 Modeling the Dynamics of Natural Gas and Crude Oil Prices ...... 20
2.4.1 Seasonality ...... 24
2.4.2 Futures Pricing ...... 24
2.4.3 Estimation Procedure ...... 28
2.5 Oil Sands Valuation Model ...... 29
viii 2.6 Data Description for Estimation and Simulation ...... 32
2.7 Results ...... 36
2.7.1 Estimation Results ...... 37
2.7.2 Valuation Results ...... 41
2.8 Concluding Remarks ...... 49
3 The Relationship Between Volatility and the Forward Curve in Crude Oil Markets 51
3.1 Introduction ...... 51
3.2 Theoretical Background ...... 54
3.3 PCA Slope Measure ...... 61
3.4 Volatilities Model Specification ...... 65
3.5 Data Description ...... 67
3.6 Estimation Methodology ...... 73
3.7 Estimation Results ...... 75
3.8 Application: Minimum Variance Hedge Ratio ...... 79
3.9 Concluding Remarks ...... 82
4 Contango and Backwardation in the Crude Oil Market: A Regime Switch- ing Approach 84
4.1 Introduction ...... 84
4.2 Convenience Yield in Commodities Price Modeling ...... 87
ix 4.3 Regime Switching Model Specification ...... 89
4.4 Futures Pricing ...... 95
4.5 Estimation Methodology ...... 96
4.6 Data Description ...... 101
4.7 Estimation Results ...... 104
4.7.1 Model Comparison ...... 111
4.7.2 The Impact of the Transitional Probabilities ...... 112
4.8 Concluding Remarks ...... 117
5 Conclusion 119
Bibliography 123
APPENDICES 132
A Appendix to Chapter 4 133
A.1 The Definition of the Q Measure ...... 133
A.2 Xt in the Q Measure ...... 134
A.3 Futures Price Formula Derivation ...... 135
A.4 Hamilton (1994) Filtration Procedure ...... 136
x List of Figures
2.1 WTI Crude Oil and HH Natural Gas Prices ...... 14
2.2 Crude Oil and Natural Gas Correlation ...... 16
2.3 Crude Oil and Natural Gas Correlation Term Structure ...... 20
2.4 Example of Natural Gas Forward Curve ...... 34
2.5 Implied Forward Curves ...... 40
2.6 Oil Sand Project Value ...... 42
2.7 The Impact of N. Gas Long Term Component Volatility ...... 43
2.8 Project Value as a Function of N. Gas Long Term component ...... 45
2.9 Impact of N. Gas Process on the Switching Prices Under Model I : Backwar- dation Case ...... 46
2.10 Impact of N. Gas Process on the Switching Prices Under Model II : Back- wardation Case ...... 47
2.11 Impact of N. Gas Process on the Switching Prices Under Model I : Contango Case...... 48
2.12 Impact of N. Gas Process on the Switching Prices Under Model II : Contango Case...... 50
xi 3.1 WTI Crude Oil Forward Curve at Different Points in Time ...... 52
3.2 PCA Loadings of the Futures Price Returns ...... 63
3.3 Loadings of the 1st PC of the Centered Futures Prices ...... 64
3.4 Time Series of the Relative Slope Factor It ...... 65
3.5 Time Series of the Slope Factor, It, and the Actual Spot Returns Volatility,
σa ...... 71
3.6 Scatter Plot of the Slope Factor, It, and the Actual Spot Returns Volatility,
σa ...... 72
3.7 Time Series of The Hedging Portfolio Return ...... 82
4.1 The Implied Forward Curve of Gibson and Schwartz (1990) Model . . . . . 90
4.2 Crude Oil Price and Return Series ...... 102
4.3 The Implied Term Structure of Futures ...... 106
4.4 Observation Classification into Regimes ...... 108
4.5 The Impact of the Market Price of Regime Switching Risk ...... 109
4.6 Model Performance Compared to Gibson and Schwartz (1990) Model . . . 113
4.7 Model Performance Compared to Gibson and Schwartz (1990) Model . . . 114
4.8 Model Performance Compared to Gibson and Schwartz (1990) Model . . . 115
4.9 The Impact of the Transitional Probabilities ...... 118
xii List of Tables
2.1 Operation Cost in Oil Sands Production ...... 13
2.2 The Long-run Slope of Crude Oil and Natural Gas ...... 18
2.3 Johansen’s Maximum-Likelihood Tests of Co-Integration ...... 19
2.4 Hypothetical Oil Sands Project Characteristics ...... 36
2.5 Descriptive Statistics of Crude Oil and Natural Gas Log Returns ...... 37
2.6 The Kalman Filter Quasi Maximum Likelihood Estimation ...... 38
2.7 Fitting Error of Model I and Model II ...... 39
2.8 Oil Sands Project Value (Values in Millions) ...... 44
3.1 Theories on forward prices and their implications ...... 62
3.2 Prediction Power of Different Slope Measures ...... 69
3.3 Descriptive Statistics ...... 70
3.4 Unit Root Test Results ...... 73
3.5 Johansen’s Maximum-Likelihood Tests of Co-Integration ...... 74
3.6 Maximum Likelihood Estimation Results ...... 76
xiii 3.7 Wald’s Test Results ...... 78
3.8 Contribution of the Forward Curve Slope on the Second Moments . . . . . 79
3.9 Hedge Portfolio Performance ...... 81
4.1 Descriptive Statistics ...... 103
4.2 Kim Filter Estimation Results of the B&S-RS Model ...... 105
4.3 Kalman Filter Estimation Results of the G&S Two-factor Model ...... 111
xiv Chapter 1
Introductory Chapter
Interest in energy-related investments and risk management has been growing in recent years. Among the important energy commodities is crude oil, which is characterized by highly uncertain and volatile prices. Crude oil is an important component of economic and business activities in any economy. Thus, understanding its price movement is crucial for successful economic and business decisions. Moreover, crude oil, and energy commodities in general, have become one of the most active alternative assets1 during recent years. Most energy products, such as crude oil and natural gas, have very liquid futures contracts that are traded in exchanges. Moreover, several investment vehicles tied to their prices are available in the market, ranging from small mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETF), to large over-the-counter contracts (e.g SWAP contracts). In addition to finan- cial investments, recent increases in energy prices have induced a large inflow of capital into energy projects. For example, according to the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI), the oil sands industry in Alberta attracted in excess of $18 billion of investment
1Alternative assets are alternative to the traditional investments such as publicly-traded stocks, bonds and mutual funds, see Anson (2002)
1 in the year 2007 and it is forecast to reach beyond $300 billion over the period from 2008 to 2030 2
This thesis attempts to contribute to the existing understanding of risk management in crude oil markets through three not unrelated essays. An important focus of the thesis is the pricing of crude oil futures contracts. Futures contracts are fundamental tools for pricing and risk management in energy markets, as they are in most commodity and financial markets. A futures contract is an agreement between two parties to buy or sell an asset at a certain future time for a set price agreed on today. Futures contracts are traded on exchanges, with certain standardized features and for different delivery dates ranging from few months to more than 5 years. Understanding the dynamics of the relation between spot and futures prices is very important as it helps in better dealing with the uncertainty in the market, in devising the appropriate models for the price process and in better valuation of related contingent claims.
In the first essay (chapter 2), the valuation of an oil sands project is studied. Unlike conventional crude oil extraction, oil sands production consumes substantial amounts of natural gas during extracting and upgrading. Natural gas prices are known to be stochastic and highly volatile. This introduces a significant stochastic component in the extraction cost. The essay studies the impact of this stochastic component in valuing oil sands projects. The valuation is done using real options methods. The motivation to use real options methods is the fact that, using these methods, operational flexibilities can be taken into consideration when valuing the project. Introducing stochastic extraction cost makes the valuation more complicated due to the fact that not only does the movement of the output and input prices need to be considered, but also the type of the co-movement
2See McColl and Slagorsky ”Canadian Oil Sands Supply Costs and Development Projects (2008-2030)” Canadian Energy Research Institute, November 2008
2 of the two prices must be taken into account. Given this fact, the essay begins with an investigation of the empirical literature about the nature of the co-movement between crude oil and natural gas prices. In particular, I consider whether there is a long-term effect that results from an economic relationship between crude oil and natural gas or whether the co-movement arises only from a short-term effect associated with the correlation of the energy prices. For the valuation section of this essay, the stochastic dynamics of the oil and gas prices are modeled using the two-factor model of Schwartz and Smith (2000) in a multi-commodity framework. In general, two-factor models have proved to capture the historical dynamics and the term structure of commodities futures fairly well. More importantly, the Schwartz and Smith (2000) framework allows us to distinguish between the long- the short-run movements of the commodity prices and thus enables us to model the long- and the short-run co-movements in the two markets in an explicit way. The valuation problem is solved by the Least Square Monte Carlo (LSMC) method proposed by Longstaff and Schwartz (2001) for valuing American options. The LSMC proved to be an efficient tool for valuing high order problems, where the number of stochastic factors are large as it is the case in this essay where there are four factors: two for crude oil prices and two for natural gas prices.
In the second essay (chapter 3), the relationship between the slope of the futures term structure and volatility in the crude oil market is investigated. The futures term structure, or simply the forward curve3, is a plot of the futures prices against their corresponding maturities at a specific point in time. Generally, the forward curve can take many shapes. However, there are two main shapes that market participants usually pay attention to: a positive slope forward curve which is known as contango and a negative slope forward curve which is known as backwardation. Many studies have documented the significance
3 Both terms, the futures term structure and the forward curve will be used interchangeably.
3 of the slope of the forward curve for predicting the volatility of the market. However, these studies use the basis, which is the spread between the futures and spot prices or between two futures prices, as a measure of the slope of forward curve. In this measure, the choice of maturities of the futures price is arbitrary. In this essay, I use another measure of the slope based on principal component analysis (PCA) used in Borovkova (2006). The advantage of using PCA is that all futures prices are used in calculating the slope of the forward curve. In this essay, I begin by reviewing the main theories on the relation between spot and futures prices and extract the implication of each theory for the relation between the slope of the forward curve and volatility. Both the literature in commodities prices modeling and the literature in exhaustible resources pricing contain theories which have some implications for the equilibrium state of this relationship. Five main theories are presented and their implications are compared. Futures contracts are commonly used as a hedging tool by producers, consumers and risk averse investors. To illustrate the usefulness of the prediction power of the forward curve slope, the essay studies whether exploiting this prediction power will improve hedging performance using futures contracts.
Modeling the stochastic nature of commodities prices is a crucial step for valuing finan- cial and real contingent claims related to commodities prices. The notion of convenience yield, defined as the benefits accruing to the owner of the physical commodity due to the flexibility in handling shocks in the market, plays a central role in commodities prices modeling as it derives the relationship between futures and spot prices in the commodities markets. The third essay (chapter 4) attempts to model the spot price process of crude oil by the notion of convenience yield in a different way. The existing convenience yield models assume the convenience yield to have either a constant value, such as Brennan and Schwartz (1985), or to have a stochastic behavior with mean reversion to one equilibrium level, such as Gibson and Schwartz (1990), Schwartz (1997) and Casassus et al. (2005).
4 The model of this essay extends the Brennan and Schwartz (1985) model to allows for regime switching in the convenience yield. The motivations behind this choice of modeling are the following. Theoretically, the convenience yield is seen as a function of the level of the commodity inventory in the economy which is in turn a function of the supply and demand conditions. Moreover, macroeconomic conditions which run through different cy- cles of booms and busts are likely to have impacts on the commodities markets especially for crucial commodities such as crude oil. Given that, it is unlikely that there is only one equilibrium state the commodity market should revert to. From the empirical side, esti- mating the Gibson and Schwartz (1990) model using crude oil futures in different periods of time produces very different values of the equilibrium level of convenience yield.
The regime switching approach to modeling provides a natural way to relax this re- strictive assumption about the level of the convenience yield. Regime-switching models are time-series models in which parameters are allowed to take on different values in each of some fixed number of regimes or states. A stochastic process assumed to have generated the regime shifts is included as part of the model, which allows for model-based forecasts that incorporate the possibility of future regime shifts. The primary use of these models in econometrics has been to describe changes in the dynamic behavior of macroeconomic and financial time series (Hamilton (1994) and Dai et al. (2007)).
The model of this essay is different from those of Chen and Forsyth (2010) and Chen (2010) who take regime switching approach to model energy prices in three main ways. First, the regime switching model proposed in their studies is based on the one-factor model applied in Schwartz (1997) where the commodity price reverts to different levels with different volatilities. In this essay, the convenience yield switches to different levels with different volatilities. Second, unlike their studies, the model of this essay allows for pricing the risk of switching between the regimes. Third, they calibrate the parameters
5 of the model by solving the partial deferential equation (PDE) characterizing the futures price numerically and calibrate the solution to the observed futures prices using least square methods. The model of this essay is estimated using an extension to the Kalman filter procedure proposed by Kim (1994). The choice of the Kalman filter procedure for estimating the model is motivated by the Monte Carlo study of Duffee and Stanton (2004) in estimating the term structure of interest rates where Kalman filtering procedure is found to be a tractable and reasonably accurate estimation technique. To judge the performance of the model of this study, it is compared with Gibson and Schwartz (1990) two- factor model.
Overall, the dissertation contributes to our understanding about risk management in crude oil markets in a number of ways.
• The thesis contributes to the literature about the co-movement of crude oil and natural gas prices by investigating the type of the co-movement using the futures prices of the two markets and proposing a way of modeling the two types of the co-movement that can be easily estimated by the term structure of futures prices in the two markets.
• The thesis contributes to the literature of real options valuation of exhaustible re- sources by studying the value of an oil sands project. In particular, the thesis studies how a stochastic extraction cost can affect the value of an exhaustible resource.
• It also contributes to the understanding of the relation between volatility and the slope of the forward curve in two ways: by extracting the implications of various theoretical work on this relation; and by analyzing the relation empirically using a more appropriate measure of the forward curve slope extracted by PCA.
6 • The thesis also contributes to the literature about commodity prices modeling by proposing a regime switching model that is more appropriate for convenience yield modeling especially for long-run valuation purposes. Moreover, the thesis shows how a closed form solution for the futures price formula can be obtained.
The main results of the dissertation are as follows:
• The analysis of the first essay shows that higher natural gas price volatility reduces the value of the project. It also shows that not only the dynamics of oil and natural gas prices are important, but also the nature of the co-movement of the two prices is an important factor to take into consideration in valuation and optimal operation. While the economic links between the two markets, i.e. being substitutes as sources of energy, suggests the existence of a long-run relationship between the two prices, the empirical evidence is weak especially if one incorporates the recent divergence in the two price series. The valuation results show that incorporating a long-run relationship between the two markets is a very crucial decision in valuing the project and in its optimal operation. It is shown that ignoring this long-run relationship makes the optimal policy more sensitive to the dynamics of natural gas prices.
• In the second essay, it is found that the forward curve slope has no significant linear impact on the variances of the futures and spot prices and the covariance between them. However, the slope of the forward curve does have a significant quadratic impact not only on the variance of spot and futures price returns as Carlson et al. (2007) and Kogan et al. (2009) found, but also in the covariance between the two prices. Moreover, it is shown that incorporating the slope of the forward curve quadratically produces a significant improvement in the hedging performance using futures contracts.
7 • Compared to the performance of the Gibson and Schwartz (1990) two-factor model, the regime switching one-factor model of the third essay does a reasonable job. In particular, the model outperforms the Gibson and Schwartz (1990) model for fitting the prices of far maturities contracts. Moreover, the transitional probabilities have been found to play an important role in producing various shapes of the futures term structure that are commonly seen in the market.
8 Chapter 2
The Impact of Stochastic Extraction Cost on the Value of an Exhaustible Resource: the Case of the Alberta Oil Sands
2.1 Introduction
Traditionally, valuing a natural resource project, or any project in general, is based on the simple net present value method. Using this method, expected future cash flows from operating a project are discounted to the current time using a constant risk adjusted discount rate and added up to give the value of the project. This procedure has been criticized for ignoring possible flexibilities in starting or operating the project. Examples of such ignored flexibilities are: the flexibility in starting the investment (option to delay)
9 and the flexibility to switch between different mode of operations (option to switch). In addition, the use of a constant risk adjusted discount rate is known to be inappropriate for valuing projects 1.
On the other hand, in the real options valuation approach, managerial flexibilities are taken into consideration when valuing a project. In general, the real options approach is based on the analogy between financial options and investment projects, and thus it uses the valuation tools developed for financial options. For more details on this method and its features, see Dixit and Pindyck (1994) and Schwartz and Trigeorgis (2004).
In their seminal paper, Brennan and Schwartz (1985) set the ground for using contingent claims analysis for valuing an exhaustible natural resources when the decision-maker has flexibility to choose from multiple modes of operation. The uncertainty in their model has only one source, the output price. They assumed fixed extraction cost and that the price follows Geometric Brownian Motion (GBM)2.
Many papers account for more realistic assumptions about the sources of the uncertainty faced by an exhaustible resource. Cortazar et al. (2008) and Tsekrekos et al. (2010) ex- tended Brennan and Schwartz (1985) valuation problem under different output price model dynamics. Cortazar et al. (2001) studied the valuation of natural resource exploration in- vestments when there is joint price and geological-technical uncertainty. Armstrong et al. (2004) accounts for the uncertainty in the reserve.
However, one aspect that seems to be ignored in this literature, valuing exhaustible
1 For valuating a copper mine using the real options approach, Brennan and Schwartz (1985) showed that the risk of the mine is function of the spot price of copper which is stochastic. Thus, the instantaneous rate of return required by investors should be stochastic, showing the inappropriateness of assuming a constant discount rate in the present value analysis. 2Brownian motion is a continuous-time stochastic process that has independent increments of normal distribution with mean of zero and variance of the time difference, i.e. if z(t) is a Brownian motion then dz(t) ∼ N(0, dt). For more details see Klebaner (2005)
10 resources using contingent clams analysis, is the possibility that production cost or part of it, along with other state variables, is stochastic and volatile as well. An exception is Slade (2001) who used yearly panel data about 21 copper mines in Canada from the 1980 to 1993 period and found that average costs, which include the costs of mining, milling, smelting, refining, shipping, and marketing, to be highly variable. Using these data, Slade (2001) then applied the real options theory to Canadian mining investments and studied the impact of copper price, average cost and resource reserve uncertainties under different assumptions about the stationarity of the stochastic processes.
The lack of studies that account for stochastic cost is possibly because of the difficulty of obtaining enough data on cost variables as is the case in Slade (2001). This makes the variability in cost hard to appreciate. A perfect example where the uncertainty of extraction cost appears to be salient is the oil sands industry. The oil sands industry consumes substantial amounts of natural gas during production and upgrading activities. According to the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI), natural gas, its price being highly volatile, contributes more than 25 percent of the total per barrel supply cost3. "In 2007, the oil sands industry accounted for approximately 1.0 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) of natural gas demand, slightly more than 40 percent of Alberta total natural gas demand of 2.7 bcf/d"4.
Two features characterize the source of uncertainty about extraction cost in the oil sands industry. First, data about natural gas prices is readily available on a daily basis. Second, crude oil and natural gas markets are linked together and thus, for better valuation and risk management decisions, modeling the nature of their co-movement should be considered.
3The supply cost is the constant dollar price needed to recover all capital expenditures, operating costs, royalties, taxes, and earn a specified return on investment 4see McColl and Slagorsky, ”Canadian Oil Sands Supply Costs and Development Projects (2008-2030)” Canadian Energy Research Institute, 2008
11 Accordingly, this chapter examines the nature of the co-movement of crude oil and natural gas markets and then studies the impact of the stochastic extraction cost on the valuation of an oil sands project. In particular, two extensions of the Schwartz and Smith (2000) model to specify the stochastic dynamics of the two prices are suggested and the Brennan and Schwartz (1985) valuation problem is solved.
As shown in Brennan and Schwartz (1985), an analytical solution to such a problem is unavailable, so they solve the problem using a finite difference numerical methods. Re- cent developments in valuing American options using simulation based methods enable researchers to explore more realistic extensions to the Brennan and Schwartz (1985) model that proved to be impractical to solve using the prevailing numerical methods such as finite difference or lattice methods. The Least Square Monte Carlo (LSMC) method developed by Longstaff and Schwartz (2001) has proved to be an efficient tool for valuing complex real options problems. Gamba (2003) provides a comprehensive overview on how LSMC could be used to value various types of real options. Accordingly, LSMC is used for the purpose of this chapter. Cortazar et al. (2008) and Tsekrekos et al. (2010) also used this method for solving real options valuation problems.
This chapter is organized as follows: section 2.2 gives a background on the oil sands industry. Section 2.3 reviews the empirical literature on the co-movement of natural gas and crude oil markets with some recent results. Sections 2.4 and 2.5 specify the modeling procedures of the state variables and the oil sands project to be used in estimation and simulation. Data description and results are given in sections 2.6 and 2.7 respectively. The last section is for concluding remarks.
12 2.2 Oil Sands Background
The oil sands are unevenly spread over 140,000 km2 (54,000 square miles) in Northern Alberta, Canada. The area contains an estimated 1.7 trillion barrels (initial volume-in- place) of an extremely heavy crude oil referred to as bitumen5. This reserve is believed to be a valuable energy source given its size, the current and expected high prices of crude oil and the state of the global supply and demand of the oil market. According to Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), capital expenditure in oil sands projects has risen from $4.2 billion in 2000 to $11.2 billion in 2009. 6
Approximately 20 percent of of Alberta’s oil sands can be found close enough under the surface (generally less than 75 meters) to permit mining production. On the other hand, around 80 percent of this reserve is found too deep below the surface for feasible mining operations. Bitumen in such deep deposits (typically 400 meters below the surface) needs to be recovered from the in situ (Latin: in place) position, similar to conventional oil, but by using a variety of special production techniques.
In in situ extraction techniques, a high temperature steam is injected inside the bitumen deposit through horizontal or vertical wells to reduce its viscosity and make it easier to be pumped up to the surface. The steam generators used within the process use natural gas as a fuel source. According to CERI, a rule-of-thumb commonly used in the industry is that 1 Mcf (thousand cubic feet) of natural gas is required to produce a barrel of bitumen. It is estimated that natural gas usage amounts to about 45 percent of total per-barrel operating cost. Table 2.1 shows the per-barrel of bitumen operating cost for a typical in
5Crude bitumen, or bitumen, is a term that reflects the heavy and highly viscous oil in the oil sands areas. The term ”oil sands” includes the crude bitumen, minerals, and rocks that are found together with the bitumen (www.ERCB.com) 6 See 2011 Statistical Handbook in (http://www.capp.ca).
13 Table 2.1. Operation Cost for Bitumen In situ Production (Canadian Dollars)
Operating Cost (Excluding Energy)
Fixed Operation Cost $ 47.6 Million per year Variable Operating Cost $ 6.6 per barrel
Natural Gas Cost $ 7.5 per barrel
Total (for capacity of 30,000 barrel per day) $ 18 per barrel Total (WTI equivalent) $ 35 per barrel Source: Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI), 2008 situ project.
A typical in situ oil sands plant consists of multiple well pads containing a group of wells where bitumen is extracted and a central processing facility (CPF) where the extracted bitumen is processed to meet certain specifications. Steam from the CPF is transported by pipelines to the well pads and distributed to the various wells. Produced water and bitumen from the wells are then taken back for processing in the CPF. The majority of the bitumen is upgraded to produce synthetic crude oil (SCO). Given this heavy dependency on natural gas in bitumen production, uncertainty in natural gas prices is an important risk factor that needs to be accounted for. Natural gas prices are characterized by high volatility and high correlation with other energy prices especially with the oil prices (see Pindyck (2004), Geman (2005) and Brown and Yucel (2007)). Figure 2.1 shows the price of natural gas at Henry Hub, a major trading point located in the south of the US on the Gulf of Mexico, along with the price of WTI crude oil from 1997 until 2010. A casual inspection of the graph indicates that the price of natural gas tends to move with the price of oil, but not always. The next section studies this co-movement in detail.
In this chapter, I study the impact of this risk factor on the value and the optimal
14 operation of an oil sands project. While the application is for oil sands industry, the analysis and insights are applicable to a variety of large natural resource projects that requires a significant amount of a volatile input with a volatile price.
2.3 Co-movement of Crude Oil and Natural Gas Prices
In general, there are two sources of co-movement among commodities as explained in Casassus et al. (2010). The first one is a short-term effect associated with the correlation of commodity prices while the second source arises from a long-term effect that results from an economic relationship such as a production relationship where one commodity is produced from another one and substitution relationship where two commodities are substitutes in consumption. Figure 2.1 shows the time series of the price of crude oil and natural gas. It appears from the graph that the two commodity prices tend to move together. The correlation coefficient is 0.26 between their (log) differences and 0.75 between their levels.
Villar and Joutz (2006) identify several economic factors that link natural gas and crude oil prices, from both supply and demand sides. One of the main links is the competition between natural gas and petroleum products which occurs principally in the industrial and electric generation sectors. Industry and electric power generators switch back and forth between natural gas and residual fuel oil, using whichever energy source is least expensive.
Some empirical studies confirm this fact, finding a long-run relationship between the two commodity price series. Villar and Joutz (2006) studied the co-movement of the two prices over the period from 1989 through 2005 and found oil and natural gas prices to be co- integrated with a trend. Brown and Yucel (2007) examined the relationship between weekly prices over the period from January 7, 1994 through July 14, 2006. Their analysis revealed
15 Figure 2.1. WTI Crude Oil and HH Natural Gas Prices that weekly oil and natural gas prices have a strong relationship, but the relationship is conditioned by weather, seasonality, natural gas storage and shut in production in the Gulf of Mexico. Hartley et al. (2008) examined the relation between natural gas and crude oil prices by studying the relation between natural gas and residual fuel oil, the main product of crude oil that is viewed as a substitute for natural gas. They used monthly data from February 1990 through October 2006. They demonstrated the existence of a long-run co- integrating relationship between natural gas and residual fuel oil. Moreover, they found that changes in electricity generating technology can explain the apparent drift in this long-run relationship seen after 2000.
Given the fact that oil prices are determined internationally, a relationship such as that found in these studies led to the use of rules of thumb in the energy industry that relate natural gas prices to those for crude oil. For example, the Canadian Energy Research
16 Institute (CERI) in its 2009 report about Canadian oil sands supply costs and development projects7 assumed that there is a 10:1 ratio between the price of oil in $/barrel and the price of natural gas in mm Btu8. Other rule of thumbs have also been used as shown in Brown and Yucel (2007).
However, other empirical studies find a weak or no long-run relationship between the two prices. Serletis and Rangel-Ruiz (2004) explored the strength of shared trends and shared cycles between natural gas and crude oil markets. Using daily data from January 1991 to April 2001, their results show that there has been a decoupling of the prices of these two sources of energy and they explained that this was a result of oil and gas deregulation. Bachmeier and Griffin (2006) found that the degree of the co-integration between the two prices was very weak during the period from 1990 to 2004. Mohammadi (2009) analyzed annual and monthly data of the period from 1970 to 2007 and found a lack of co-integration relationship in the annual data and a weak one in the monthly data. Moreover, he examined the possibility of co-integration with asymmetric adjustments using threshold autoregressive (TAR) models. The results again fail to reject the null hypothesis of no co-integration.
Figure 2.2 shows the correlation coefficient between the daily returns of the two com- modity prices in each month. It is clear from the graph that the correlation between the two price movements has gone through up and down cycles. In the late 90’s, the corre- lation was relatively low, around 0.1. From 2003 to 2008, one can identify a cycle of a high co-movement, the correlation coefficient was around 0.4 on average. This cycle has
7See McColl, Mei, Millington and Slagorsky ”Canadian Oil Sands Supply Costs and Development Projects (2009-2043)” Canadian Energy Research Institute, November 2009 8 mm Btu stands for 10,000 million British thermal units. Natural gas can also be measured in gigajoule(GJ) and thousand cubic feet (Mcf). NYMEX Henry Hub natural gas prices are quoted in mm Btu. The relation between these three measures are: 1 mm BTU = 1.027 Mcf =1.05 GJs
17 Figure 2.2. Monthly Correlation of Daily Returns of WTI Crude Oil and HH Natural Gas. been attributed to two sources9: (1) to the large demand for energy products from emerg- ing economies, such as China and India, which have experienced a very rapid economic growth during the period, and (2) to the financial market demand for commodities index investments which are designed to get exposure to commodities prices for diversification purposes and/or better risk-return opportunities. A cycle of low correlation is clearly seen recently, which is mainly attributed to strong growth in shale gas production 10. This is also clear from the divergence in the two prices seen since the end of 2008 as shown in Figure 2.1.
9 There is a large amount of research work on 2004-2008 increase in energy prices: whether it is caused by fundamentals (supply and demand factors) or by a bubble resulted from the large inflow of index investments. Refer to Irwin and Sanders (2011) for an excellent survey of the subject. 10For more details see The 2011 Annual Energy Outlook prepared by the U.S. Energy Information Administration available at http://www.eia.gov
18 Table 2.2. The Long-run Slope of Crude Oil and Natural Gas
Number of Weeks WTI Crude oil HH N.Gas F12-F01 F24-F01 Positive Negative 53 42 Negative Positive 211 160 total 814 761 crude oil and natural gas futures prices from January 1995 to August 2010 was used
Regarding the long-term relationship, I found empirical support for the result that there is no long-term relationship between oil and natural gas prices. Table 2.3 shows the Johansen’s maximum-likelihood tests of co-integration11. The results fail to reject the null hypothesis of no co-integration in futures prices for different maturities except the results of the trace statistic in the first month futures prices. However, the results for the long-term futures suggest no long-run relationship. Moreover, Table 2.2, shows that more than 25% of time, the long-run slope of the forward curves of both oil and gas futures, measured by the difference between the one year or the two years futures price and the first month futures price, have different signs which indicates that the two markets lack a strong long-run relationship. Casassus et al. (2010) shows that commodities with economic links exhibit an upward-sloping curve in their correlation term structure, i.e. the correlation coefficient between futures price returns as a function of maturities. Figure 2.3 shows the correlation term structure between natural gas and crude oil prices and it is clear that the upward-sloping is absent indicating a lack of long-run relationship.
In summary, the economic links between two markets suggest the existence of a long-
11Using the Augmented Dickey-Fuller test, the null hypothesis of non-stationarity could not be rejected in the levels but can be in the first difference for all futures prices of both commodities. This result is standard in the literature and it is not shown here.
19 Figure 2.3. The Correlation Term Structure of HH N. Gas and WTI Crude Oil Futures relationship between the two prices but the empirical evidence is weak especially if one incorporates the recent divergence in the two price series. Accordingly, in modeling the dynamics of the two prices, two models are proposed, one incorporates a long-run link between the two markets while the other has no such link.
2.4 Modeling the Dynamics of Natural Gas and Crude Oil Prices
The models presented in this section can be seen as an extension to the Schwartz and Smith
(2000) model. Denote S1,t and S2,t to be the time t spot price of one unit of crude oil and natural gas respectively. Assume that the spot price of both commodities is decomposed
20 Table 2.3. Johansen’s Maximum-Likelihood Tests of Co-Integration
Null Alternative Statistic Prob.** (r ≡ No. of Cointegrations)
F01
Trace r = 0 r > 1 28.272 0.025 r ≤ 1 r > 1 10.466 0.108 Max-Eigen r = 0 r = 1 17.807 0.084 r = 1 r = 2 10.466 0.108
F04
Trace r = 0 r > 1 24.159 0.081 r ≤ 1 r > 1 8.203 0.236 Max-Eigen r = 0 r = 1 15.955 0.147 r = 1 r = 2 8.203 0.236
F07
Trace r = 0 r > 1 20.4042 0.2062 r ≤ 1 r > 1 5.0447 0.5900 Max-Eigen r = 0 r = 1 15.359 0.175 r = 1 r = 2 5.045 0.590
F10
Trace r = 0 r > 1 19.130 0.273 r ≤ 1 r > 1 3.226 0.849 Max-Eigen r = 0 r = 1 15.904 0.149 r = 1 r = 2 3.226 0.849
F15
Trace r = 0 r > 1 17.866 0.353 r ≤ 1 r > 1 4.119 0.725 Max-Eigen r = 0 r = 1 13.747 0.272 r = 1 r = 2 4.119 0.725
The sample is from 3/20/1995 to 8/02/2010 (803 observations). A lin- ear deterministic trend is included in the VAR system with maximum lag interval of 10 and the optimal lag is chosen by AIC.
21 into three components as following12:
Log(Si,t) = Xi,t + xi,t + gi(t), i = 1, 2, (2.1) where:
Xi,t is a non-stationary stochastic process corresponding to the long-run movement in the price of commodity i,
xi,t is a mean-reverting stochastic process. It accounts for the short-term variations in the price of commodity i around its long-run component, and
gi(t) is a deterministic function corresponding to the seasonal movement in the price of commodity i. It will be specified later.
In specifying the stochastic behavior of the long-run and the short-run components, two specifications are considered. I will denote them as Model I and Model II respectively.
Model I
In this model, the behavior of the long-run and the short-run stochastic components,
Xi,t and xi,t respectively, is given by the the following stochastic differential equations under the physical measure:
12 Given this choice of modeling, the oil price behavior becomes exogenous to the oil sand industry. This is not unreasonable because the impact of oil extraction from oil sands on the price of oil is negligible. Oil prices have been increasing recently even with the rise of the supply from oil sands industry, which reflects the fact that oil sands supply is not yet to affect on oil prices.
22 Log(Si,t) = Xi,t + xi,t + gi(t), i=1,2,
dX1,t = µ1dt + σ1dW1,t dX2,t = µ2dt + σ2dW2,t (2.2) dx1,t = −κ1x1,tdt + γ1dZ1,t dx2,t = −κ2x2,tdt + γ2dZ2,t.
where µi denotes the rate of growth of the long-run component of commodity i, σi denotes the volatility of the long-run component of the price of commodity i, κi denotes the speed of mean reversion in the short-run component of the price of commodity i, γi denotes the volatility of the short-run component of the price of commodity i, and dWi,t and dZi,t are four possibly correlated increments of Brownian motions.
The system can be written in the following matrix form:
dYt = (M + ΨYt)dt + ΣdBt, (2.3) where:
X1 µ1 0 0 0 0 σ1 0 0 0 X2 µ2 0 0 0 0 0 σ2 0 0 Yt = , M = , Ψ = , Σ = x1 0 0 0 −κ1 0 0 0 γ1 0 x2 0 0 0 0 −κ2 0 0 0 γ2 and
23 W1,t W2,t Bt = . Z1,t Z2,t
In this model, the co-movement between the two commodity prices is only captured through the correlation structure of the Brownian motions increments.
Model II
In this model, motivated by the rule of thumb used in the natural gas market, we let the long-run component of the natural gas price depend on its deviation from the long-run component of the crude oil price as follows:
Log(Si,t) = Xi,t + xi,t + gi(t), i = 1, 2,
dX1,t = µ1dt + σ1dW1,t dX2,t = α(X1,t − X2,t − χ)dt + σ2dW2,t (2.4) dx1,t = −κ1x1,tdt + γ1dZ1,t dx2,t = −κ2x2,tdt + γ2dZ2,t
In this specification, the long-run component of natural gas reverts to a level of e−χ from the long-run component of crude oil price. The parameter χ dictates the equilibrium
24 −χ ratio between the two long-run prices. That is, in equilibrium, S2,t = e · S1,t. Temporary deviation from this long-run ratio (because of demand and supply imbalances caused by macro-economic factors and inventory shocks, etc.) will be corrected over the long-run.
Note that the long-run component of oil price, X1,t, is assumed not to depend on the price of natural gas. This reflects the empirical result that crude oil prices are determined internationally while natural gas prices are determined regionally (see Villar and Joutz (2006) and Mohammadi (2009)).
The matrix form for this model is the same as equation (2.3) except that the vector M and the matrix Ψ are defined as follows:
µ1 0 0 0 0 −α · χ α −α 0 0 M = and Ψ = 0 0 0 −κ1 0 0 0 0 0 −κ2
2.4.1 Seasonality
The third component, gi(t) corresponds to the seasonal movement in the price of commodity i. Following Harvey (1989), gi(t) is modeled by trigonometric functions of the form:
gi(t) = Aisin(2πft) + Bicos(2πft) (2.5)
where Ai and Bi are constants correspond to the size of the seasonality effect and f is the frequency of the seasonality per year13
13Trigonometric functions for seasonality are well known in natural gas derivatives pricing, examples are: Xu (2004), Casassus et al. (2010) and Chen and Forsyth (2010).
25 2.4.2 Futures Pricing
Denote the futures price at time t for one unit of commodity i delivered in τ period by
Fi,t(τ, Yt), where Yt is the vector of the risk factors that affect the price of commodity i as specified above. For derivative pricing, one should specify the stochastic processes in the risk neutral measure denoted as Q measure14. To achieve that, constant market prices of risk are assumed and the change of measure is thus of the following form:
Q −1 dBt = dBt + ΛΣ dt (2.6)
> where Λ is 4 by 1 vector of constant market prices of risk. That is, Λ = [λX1 λX2 λx1 λx2 ] , where λj is the market price of risk associated with the process j.
Therefore, the dynamics of the state vector under the risk-neutral measure would be:
Q Q dYt = (M + ΨYt)dt + ΣdBt (2.7) where Q µ1 − λX1 µ1 Q Q µ2 − λX2 µ2 M = M − Λ = = −λx1 −λx1 −λx2 −λx2
14 The risk neutral measure, as opposed to the physical measure, is the measure implied by the market prices of the derivative contracts. This measure adjusts for the risk as market participants adjust for risk when they set the derivative prices. Details on deriving the risk neutral process for the purpose of derivative pricing can be found in Bj¨ork(2003).
26 for Model I, and
Q µ1 − λX1 µ1 Q Q α · χ − λX2 −α · χ M = M − Λ = = −λx1 −λx1 −λx2 −λx2 for Model II
From Bj¨orkand Landen (2000), the futures price of commodity i at time t for delivery in τ periods, Fi,t(τ), should satisfy the following partial differential equation (PDE):
> 2 ∂Fi,t(τ) ∂Fi,t(τ) Q 1 ∂ Fi,t(τ) − + (M + Ψ)Yt + T r 2 Ω = 0 (2.8) ∂τ ∂Yt 2 ∂Yt where T r(·) is the matrix trace and Ω is the covariance matrix of ΣdB which is then given by:
2 σ1 ρw1w2 σ1σ2 ρw1z1 σ1γ1 ρw1z2 σ1γ2 2 ρw1w2 σ1σ2 σ2 ρw2z1 σ2γ1 ρw2z2 σ2γ2 Ω = dt · , 2 ρw1z1 σ1γ1 ρw2z1 σ2γ1 γ1 ρz1z2 γ1γ2 2 ρw1z2 σ1γ2 ρw2z2 σ2γ2 ρz1z2 γ1γ2 γ2 where ρi,j denote to the instantaneous correlation between Brownian motions i and j.
The spot price of the commodity i at time t can be seen as the futures price at time t for immediate delivery (i.e. τ = 0). Thus, the above PDE has the following boundary condition: Log Fi,T (0, YT) = Xi,T + xi,T + g(T ). (2.9)
27 Since the two models are in the affine framework, the solution of the above PDE has the following form as shown by Dai and Singleton (2000) and Tian (2003):